Oct. 9---I visited a Montessori preschool today, one of several I am checking out for Felix. We think Felix’s teacher in his toddler group at his present daycare is wonderful, but he’s ready to move on to a group with older kids.

I was really exhausted after spending an hour and fifteen minutes visiting this school. Not because it was chaotic or crazy—the atmosphere there is far from that, actually: the children were totally engaged in their little projects with drawing animals, or making letters, or sorting shapes and colors, or siphoning colored water from one beaker and squirting it into another. Also, I had a long delightful conversation with the very dynamic director. She showed me some endearing books about children in Japan who meet foreigners, and about a biracial child’s family, written by an American who grew up in Japan. When I sat down to read them, a little girl who’d been fascinated with me ever since I arrived showed me another book that showed how to make colorful animals with autumn leaves.

Suddenly I had eight kids surrounding me, pointing and exclaiming at the leaf animals. Then Annie Jane, a five-year-old whose parents let us crash her birthday party at the park last month, showed me a book about colors called “Little Blue.” She and another little girl read some of the words with me, about how Blue and his friend Yellow hug each other to make green.

I felt so warm and fuzzy, it almost made me want to start my own preschool. To look into their smiling, searching eyes, their eyes that show they are getting to know the world’s wonders, lifted me up, but also wrenched me open.
I try not to force the door closed on my sadness, but lately it’s been easier to move through the hours without feeling flayed open, exposed to the indifferent elements. I’m building up my protective layers again, the healthy kind that keep me safe and calm, not hardened and edgy. So today when I immersed myself in all that little-kid energy, and saw another teacher at the school who is pregnant (“having a baby in three weeks,” the director said; I hope so, I thought), it was like having one of those layers slowly, painfully peeled away. I really did enjoy myself and smiled the whole time, but once I was alone, that rawness began throbbing, and regret flooded through me. Now I’m exhausted. Some tears slide silently down my face as I sit here at the public library, gazing out at the treetops through the big picture windows.

I thought I wanted to just sit and read today, but I need to take myself into the glorious clear day out there. An October passage from Healing After Loss reads, “In the turning of the seasons, I find promise and hope.” I’ve been feeling particularly drawn to the colors of autumn. Maybe I’ll gather some colorful leaves and make pictures of animals with them.